Mirko Vukasovic's non-portfolio

Tag Archives: Viaje

Just a quick, short post to let you know that as of tomorrow, I’ll be in Brač, Croatia, photographing people, lifestyle and landscapes for a personal project I’ve been working on about immigrants in Patagonia. Brač is one of the islands that most croats came from in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, to the rough Patagonian living conditions, in a region that was just being born.

If you know anyone who has connections to the island, anyone who has stayed after their relatives left, anyone with an interesting story, let me know and I’ll do my best to get to them.

Every now and then I find myself in need to change my habits, with a wide range of subjects to choose from: Eating, editing, dressing, workout and lately, settings while shooting habits.

The exercise I tried this time is to have a broad range, within a few limits to work on, thus forcing myself to be creative. At least that’s what I drafted out.

And so I went with two rather new lenses I bought and I’m still trying to see how they work, how I feel with them and what the images look like in a real, live environment with stuff happening all around me: the Sigma 70-200 2,8 (not the OS version) and the Tokina 11-16 2,8. The setting was the “Shearing Festival” in a small village about 100 kms away from Punta Arenas (in fact, the only village in a radio of 200 or so kms) that gathers loads of people from the countryside in a sheep shearing show, as well as “jineteadas”, that features a wild, untamed horse and a brave rider, all in argentinian countryside style clothing and the hope that the horse will jump a lot. They always do.

What was with the settings again? Right, the lenses and all. While shooting RAW, it is fairly easy to correct some mistakes you might fall into when working this way. For me, it was the first time working with two lenses in what I planned to be an all-around setup and it turned out quite well, although I wasn’t carrying any special backpack for the gear or anything, it felt a bit clumsy while trying to change lenses and not having the time to think about life, flowers or light diffraction. Good for now. More tests to come.